About a month after Daddy died, I was overcome with blinding feeling of anger. It was frightening. I have never in my life felt such anger. I knew it was a signal that I needed to look outside of myself for help. I found a page that dealt with grief and I posted about it. The administrator of the page said that anger is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it stirs you into action. The action I choose to take was grief counseling. I had tried, a couple of weeks before, to actually find some counseling, and was not successful. After getting this blinding sense of anger, I was able to find counseling the next day. Funny, how things work sometimes.
Fast forward, I thought I had this anger under control. I hadn't felt that much anger in a while. And I have been going to weekly grief group counseling for about 4 months. I am better. I feel better. I am no longer afraid, and I thought I was not as angry until yesterday.
I got into a socio-political argument. I'm not sure socio-political is the right word, but it was an argument over welfare, or more specifically who deserves it and who doesn't. This person, I felt, was blaming poor people for being poor. This person is a blue collar worker, living paycheck to paycheck, so she is not that far from poor herself. Now, it makes me angry to see people blame poor people for being poor, in the first place, but to see someone blaming them while never having been there themselves (even though she is close to it) is an anger trigger for me. It took a neutral third party to call a "time out" for the argument to end. The third party was able to put both of our points of view into perspective in a way that neither of us was able too.
But, I cannot stop thinking about it, playing the conversation over and over, in my head. I am trying to get past it, I'm trying to work it out, I'm trying to figure out how to control my anger. And it is fucking hard. I just keep picking at it, picking out how wrong she was. It is distracting me from being able to 1. just forget about it, and 2. figure out what could I have done to help her understand where I was coming from, instead of her coming out of the argument with hurt feelings, (which btw is her problem, not mine, but I wasn't able to show her a different way of looking at the issue.) I feel like I failed, because I really truly believe she was wrong and I was right. I was able to see her point of view, but she wasn't able to see mine. Is this my fault? And I do have to say I am somewhat ashamed that I was arguing with a 22-year-old, and I am in my 50s. On the other hand, does she not have respect for the fact that I am in my 50s, and I may know a little more than she does? See, it is just all a big clusterfuck. And, I cannot let it go. I feel like this anger of mine is over-shadowing my compassion, my common sense, my desire to teach, my desire to share.
I feel like I am forever changed by this anger. I am forever changed by John and Daddy's death. On the one hand, anger is giving me a voice. On the other hand, this voice isn't the best one. I am not using it in a good way. I am not controlling it, it is controlling me. How do I look at anger as a gift? Is anger a gift? Is anger bad? Do I need to forgive people "for my own good"? I don't understand that concept yet.
So, the best answer I can come up with, for now, is - agree to disagree. I will continue this awful, stupid, fucking grief work. I will keep thinking, writing, and talking about it until I get to the point where I am simply grateful I ever got the pleasure of knowing John, and simply grateful that Daddy was my dad, instead of being angry that they are no longer here. Maybe then, I can control this anger. But, maybe I have to learn to control this anger, let this anger go, before I can come to a place of peace and gratefulness.
For now, agree to disagree.
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